The Pitfalls of Stereotyping.

A multinational crowd in Paris, taken from the Eifel Tower.

You do it; you know you do. We all do, usually without realising it. We have a tendency to put all people from a nation, class, occupation or whatever into the same pot and accuse them all of the same faults. It’s a form of laziness, sometimes a simple resort to shorthand because we find it too onerous to look beneath the surface, sometimes because we lack experience, sometimes because our circle of friends and acquaintances simply isn’t wide enough.

Here, today, I want to look at the way we, as writers, can easily be persuaded into making our characters into stereotypes; specifically, national stereotypes. Of course, what we should strive for is the archetype instead, if we are attempting to portray a ‘type’ at all.

So, let’s start by understanding what a stereotype actually is. My SOED(Shorted Oxford English Dictionary - 2 large authoritative volumes for those who don’t know), my personal bible for definitions, defines the noun, for the purposes of this piece, as follows: A preconceived , standardised, and oversimplified impression of the characteristics which typify a person…often shared by all members of a society or certain social groups; an attitude based on such a preconception. Also a person…appearing to conform closely to such a standardised impression.

And, because it’s germane, let’s also look at what inspired me to post this today. My wife and I have just (Tuesday 2nd October) returned from a 10 day holiday in France. It’s a country I’ve not visited before, so my expectations of the people were formed by impressions from friends and colleagues. Now, it’s well known that the Brits and the French aren’t natural buddies. They’re said to consider us conservative, dull and uncultured. We, especially the English, apparently consider them arrogant, dirty, sexually predatory and unwelcoming to strangers.

 

But, Paris is as cosmopolitan as any major city so I also expected to meet people of many other nations. I wasn’t disappointed. We were greeted at Charles De Gaul Airport by a charming Frenchman, who drove us to our hotel in the city, speaking excellent English and quietly informative. The receptionist, Karolina, was a pretty, efficient, charming and multilingual Polish girl who greeted us warmly and answered all our questions with knowledge and confidence. The lady who prepared breakfasts and cleaned the rooms was a black Frenchwoman, with no English, who smiled and greeted us with warmth.

We’d booked an all day walking tour of the city and found the French staff at Cityrama helpful and competent with no trace of the arrogance they should have displayed with their superior knowledge. Our guide for the day was Chantal, a charming mature French lady who conducted the tour with skill, humour and encyclopaedic knowledge, shepherding our small group of five around the crowded Louvre, Eifel Tower and Notre Dam with casual expertise and patient attention to our varied needs. The group consisted of my wife and I, both from the north of England, an English woman from London and an American couple from a small town near Cincinnati, Ohio. The latter pair, who made no effort to speak even a greeting in French, could have impressed me with an idea of Americans as being selfish, self-important, inconsiderate, grouchy, complaining, demanding and generally rude. However, not only was this initial impression softened slightly during the day by the addition of a glimpse of inappropriate humour from the man, who seemed to think it okay to mock the armed guards patrolling the Eifel Tower, much to the distress of his wife, but also by his willingness to engage our lone black English lady in conversation.

It helped modify my first impressions of Americans that we sat next to another couple, from Texas, in the first floor restaurant at the Tower (lunch there was part of the package), and they proved charming and interesting neighbours with no trace of the gung-ho attitude displayed by our tour companions. When they left and were replaced by a couple from Washington State, my impressions were further improved due to their quiet and almost shy responses to our conversation.

I could go on to describe the French staff at the Tower restaurant (all charming), the Italian staff at the restaurant where we ate one evening (also charming), the Japanese group who shared our carriage on the train from Paris to St Raphael (amusing, multilingual and helpful), the French taxi driver who waited exactly as arranged via my pigeon-French emails to collect us for our ride to St Maxime and proved to be friendly and welcoming, and the various groups and couples we met on walks, boat trips and in restaurants - Swiss, German, Australian, English and French. But I think you get the picture.

Perhaps the one fly in the ointment, for the French, was the utter lack of customer care shown by the owners of the holiday resort where we spent our week in St Maxime. We were greeted there by an envelope stuck on the outside of the door of the reception point. An inadequate map directed us to our accommodation, where we were expected to make our own beds, and where there was nothing in the way of a welcome pack - no food or drink to refresh the weary travellers, not even any paper in the toilet, and no information about where we might buy such items. This theme extended throughout the week, with an early morning meeting demanded for the following morning, which we attended but for which they failed to show up. This was followed by a departure, where we were expected to allow an inspection prior to leaving, for which they also failed to arrive as arranged, leaving us concerned in case we couldn’t finalise things before the taxi arrived to take us to Nice Airport. As it happened, both these failures were dealt with efficiently and in a friendly manner by two English maintenance men who happened to be on duty, cleaning the swimming pool, at the times.

If I’d based my impressions of the French on the behaviour of the owners of that complex I would have left the place with a very different impression from the one I gleaned by contact with many other people. And that’s my point: apologies for the convoluted trip to arrive here.

If we, as writers, have no contact with the people about whom we write, it’s clear that we can’t rely on the impression provided by minimal contact with a few representatives of a nation or on information given by friends and acquaintances, no matter how well-meaning. The popular habit of labelling people from other countries as if they were all the same is patently absurd. The world, as a whole, seems to regard the French as arrogant, Germans as aggressive, Americans as obsessively self-important, Italians as incurable Lotharios, the Swiss as boring and the English as dull and repressed. If, as writers, we employ such lazy categorisation to describe fictional characters, we do the citizens of the whole world a serious disservice.  

People are different or the same according to our own perceptions, ideas, philosophies and personalities. Whilst the placing of a descriptive label on a whole nation may be considered acceptable for everyday reference (and I don’t think it is), it’s certainly not a satisfactory way for an author to represent a character. If I’ve learned anything about the peoples of various nations it’s that they’re all as complex and individual as we are ourselves. It’s an insult to make a box, label it ‘French’ and stick inside it every person from that nation, unless, of course, it’s a shorthand joke intended to create humour rather than offence.

We’re more than the seed of the country of our birth, however proud, or otherwise, we may be of that origin. Americans are more than America with its brash, overconfident, hypocritical, Bible-bashing, superior and dominating world image. Germans are more than Germany and its efficient, calculating, aggressive, bullying and precise global persona. And the English are more than England with its quaint, bumbling, reserved, atheistic and self-effacing world picture. Each nation is seen as a specific type by every other nation and these types differ according to which nation is describing which: a proof, if ever one were needed, of the inaccuracy of such stereotyping.

So, when you decide to make your villain an Englishman, your business tycoon an American, your lusty lover an Italian, your artist a Frenchman or your engineer a German, please call to mind the simple fact that people are individuals first and national types, if at all, a long way down the line. You’ll make your writing so much more real and accessible and, perhaps more importantly for a writer, you might even collect some foreign friends and readers along the way. 

Related articles

• Some Inaccurate Negative Stereotypes About Stereotypes
• French Stereotypes / Stéréotypes français
• New research reveals what the French really think about London
• Stereotypically racist lib site criticizes conservatives for being stereotypically racist

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, Reviewed

I read this classic on my Kindle whilst holidaying in Paris and the South of France, which proved serendipitous, as the bulk of the action takes place in these two locations. In fact, I recognised many of the places referred to in the book, as I toured.

A great tome of a read, it gripped me from the start and held my attention throughout, in spite of the often flowery descriptive prose, authorial intrusion and sometimes obtuse classical references.

Dumas draws the central character, Edmond Dantes, later the eponymous count, with a fine and sympathetic pen. The young man’s utter innocence is beautifully depicted as is his fall through bad luck into catastrophe. But his rise from near death and subsequent search for justice and revenge, acting as an agent of God, is sublime writing.

The author is, of course, writing his fable in France close to the time of Napoleon and his rise, fall and regaining of power. The Catholic faith is a deep and constant influence on the actions, thoughts and emotions of the novel’s characters. It is also a profound driver of the author’s philosophy and is often a subtle enough influence to deceive the writer into a false impression of his own impartiality.

The language is, of course, picturesque, detailed and full of allusion, as you would expect of a novel written in and for an age when readers had more leisure time and actively sought such full narrative form. Dumas often uses fifteen words where today’s readers would be content with four.

But the narrative fits the action, the period and the characters. This is deservedly a literary classic and those whose experience of the tale is limited to the distortions of Hollywood and the many adaptations (I except the brilliant 13 part series produced by BBC TV in the 1960s) will be unaware of the great humour and satire displayed by the written text.

This fable of man’s desire to usurp the role of Fate, God, or whatever other disinterested mechanism for corrective justice you envisage, is not an easy read. But it rewards the attentive reader with its ready exposure of both the dark and lighter side of human behaviour. It explains aspects of history, particularly French history, which might otherwise remain obscure. And it deals with ideas, themes and philosophies that might be imagined more modern than they are in fact.

I happily recommend this book, well aware that its length and content may make it appear too daunting to those modern readers reluctant to venture beyond the boundaries of the genre with which they are comfortable and familiar. Should you get the opportunity to read this, I urge you to do so. You won’t be disappointed.

Related articles

• The Real Count of Monte Cristo

Are All Writers Liars?

Image via Wikipedia

All writers are liars, you know. They all construct their own fictional version of the world in which they exist. But honesty's actually essential for an author. Readers are clever folk and very quickly spot inconsistencies, inaccuracies and attempts to fool them into believing something that just isn't true, so trying is a bit daft.

But, how do authors grab the attention of readers and convince them that the world they're about to drag them into is something they can accept? How do they take them on a journey into whatever fantasy they've devised? For, except in the case of straightforward journalism (assuming such a thing exists), all writing contains an element of fantasy. Whether or not the reader perceives it that way often depends more on the reader's experiences of life than the writer's presentation of events. Some people are more gullible than others, that's all.

There are clear works of fantasy, The Lord of the Rings, 1984, Maia, where the story unfolds in a land or society that's clearly invented. And these are lumped together by publishers under the genre of Fantasy as a way of enticing readers who enjoy such imaginative works. But other works, both fictional and factual, contain elements of fantasy in that they're always the creation of the mind of another human being. None of us experiences the world in exactly the same way, after all. We overlay our view of events and people with our personal sets of values and judgements, which are based on the combination of those things we've experienced and those we've been taught to believe.

Even a simple situation seen through the eyes of different people will contain elements in common but will also be a different experience for each viewer. The man brought up a Roman Catholic will have an entirely different world view from the woman raised in a strict Muslim tradition. This is perhaps an obvious example, but even siblings of the same age and gender will view life differently, filtered through their individual experiences and their responses to those things they've been involved in. Every interaction, every influence, every event impacts on each of us in slightly different ways to make us into the people we are. Yet each of us, presented with a simple event, will be sure that what we see is what the others will also see, or, worse, that we're the only ones to perceive the reality; when, in fact, of course, none of us sees the reality, even the person creating it.

An example? How do you portray what's actually experienced by another human being in such a way as to provide something that's likely to be seen by most people in a similar way? Here's an apple. A simple enough statement. But what do you see in your mind's eye? Do you see a French Golden Delicious, an orchard apple plucked fresh from the branch, a bruised and worm-eaten windfall, a golden representation as presented by Paris, a whole red fruit, or a crisp green apple with a bite already taken from it? If you're imbued with Abrahamic fundamentalism, you may be incapable of separating the image of the apple from the representation of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, blaming Eve for her consumption of the apple. Even though you know, because it's been said many times, that no apple is ever mentioned in your sacred texts and that the story is, in any case, simply a myth created to explain the inexplicable, you'll be plagued by that image and it will skew your world view. Another obvious and well-known example of how we're formed by our own worlds. But, hopefully, you get the point. None of us exists without outside influence on our view of the world, but for each of us that perspective is unique.

So, to return to the original question: how do authors grab the attention of readers, convince them that the world they're about to enter is something they can accept, and then take them on a journey into whatever fantasy they have devised?

First; they accept that there are limits to their ability. There will be whole cultures that will stumble at the first mention of electricity, having never experienced this energy. There will be groups that will have difficulty accepting equality of the sexes, others that will baulk at the mention of bare skin, some for whom the idea that money is the only worthwhile pursuit, others who will insist that ghosts exist, and yet others who are incapable of accepting that a man may love a man, a woman a woman in a sexual way.

Because of these varied and sometimes opposing viewpoints, authors are often driven into writing for certain portions only of the population, levered into expressing their ideas only to a limited few.

The writer of horror, accepting the conventions of that genre, takes the reader into places that seem superficially ordinary, even mundane, and then introduces elements designed to raise anxiety, fear, distress, disgust, loathing and many other emotions that can be described as negative. Often, it's the contrast between the everyday and the unusual that feeds these emotions, the partially anticipated crisis arising from a foundation of apparent normality. Because the reader is familiar with the method, a slow beginning is often accepted on the promise of the horror to come.

The crime writer either pins attention with the nature of the crime in the opening scenes, relying on curiosity and fellow-feeling to make the reader need to discover what's happened and why, or sets a puzzle the reader wishes to solve, persuading them into believing they can reach the right answer before the detective and therefore pandering to their ego. Again, convention allows the author to use a form of creative shorthand, since the reader knows what to expect, certain aspects of the story can be held as being self-explanatory and therefore not worthy of description.

In romance, that wide and much-sub-divided genre, the emphasis is on the emotional bond between the loving protagonists. The reader expects to find a happy, or at least, a satisfying ending, where the conclusion to the contest is driven by the perception that justice will inevitably be visited on those who love and are loved.

The one area where the genre is less likely to determine the readership is what is loosely called 'literary fiction'. It's a field of creation in which language is often the primary concern, sometimes to the detriment of story and character. Because of this cerebral emphasis, the emotional content is frequently less easily assimilated by the reader, though, of course, there are exceptions. Indeed, when the best of the other genres meets the best of the literary, it generally results in something that either is or will become a classic. The melding of story, character, language and emotion creating something which is greater than its component parts.

And, finally, the writer for whom the challenge of portraying real emotion to a diverse readership is seen as too difficult can always turn to the thriller. Yes, I know, there are thrillers which are full of emotional content, of course there are. I've written one myself. But, as a genre, it's generally accepted by its readership that the story is what matters. It's this basic simplicity that brings readers to authors such as Dan Brown and that most inexplicably successful of writers, Jeffrey Archer.

So, to conclude; if you're hoping to capture the hearts of most of your readers, you're going to have to decide which genre to use to convey your ideas. If you're exceptionally brilliant, you can risk the literary route, accepting that your readership may be smaller. If, on the other hand, you want numbers and uncritical acclaim, you can write something mostly devoid of emotional content and label it a thriller. Up to you.

A silly question for you to ponder: Why is 'bra' singular, but 'panties' plural?